Page 173 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

162 Born-agains and mainstream believers

for themselves, based on the choices they have seen their parents make for
them when they watch together.
Agreeing with many others among our interview families, Dinah
believes older television programs to be less offensive and problematic
than current ones. The Nickelodeon cable channel provides a selection of
such programs, and Dinah reports that much of their family viewing is
concentrated on its fare. She lists some examples of the kinds of programs
they watch together there, listing re-run programs like the Dick Van Dyke
Show and Mary Tyler Moore. Some of their choices, like re-runs of Taxi,
do border on the kind of salacious programs they would otherwise want to
be seen to eschew, having been somewhat “racy” at the time they were
originally aired.
When asked if they have watched network programs with religious
themes or plots, such as the long-running Touched by an Angel or Seventh
Heaven, they respond,

Karl: Every once in a while we kind of stumbled into – is it, Touched by
an Angel?
Dinah: Yeah, and then Seventh Heaven. I’ve seen that once. But no, we
don’t search them out and watch them

But then, Karl goes on,

Karl: Again, the only intentional network watching we’ve done that I can
remember in five years is ER. It’s a function of schedule and doing
other things and the fact that really TV is kind of an unimportant
entertainment outlet. It’s not all that intentional, except for me to see
sports on the weekends and when we watch a video.

This is interesting, and comes up in such a way as to suggest it has been an
important program, at least for Karl and Dinah. Their explanation for
their interest in ER and the way they began watching it is interesting. “I
never watched it until all these people that I really respect said they really
liked it,” says Dinah. Asked if it was people at the hospital where she
worked, Dinah replies, “Well actually it was more people in my family
who really liked it and said that I should check it out, and I’d been
wanting to because they’d talk about it.”
This suggests that ER, which is clearly in a different category for Dinah
and Karl than the shows they watch with their children, has a level of
social and personal currency for them. It is the one program they identify
as something they watch together. It was something they began to watch as
the result of recommendations from family and friends. It is pleasing and
satisfying for them, and it is, significantly, not a program that we would
put in that category of sentimental or inoffensive television. Instead, it is a